


trial & error

by pyrites



Series: hand in hand [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Asexual Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Autistic Jon, Bisexual Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Flashbacks, Gender Identity, Hurt/Comfort, Jon Sims Bi Pride January 2021, Light Angst, Nonbinary Jon, OCD Jon, Other, Pre-Canon, Relationship Negotiation, TL;DR - Not everything is black and white.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:09:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28985391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrites/pseuds/pyrites
Summary: (And he’d suspected, of course. Hoped for it to be true, hoped he hadn’t just handcrafted it all in his head. Dragging daydreams out of their duets, desperate and delusional and lonely. He just feared it, too. It scared him just as much to want.)iv.gender
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Original Female Character(s)
Series: hand in hand [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2095512
Comments: 19
Kudos: 58
Collections: GerryTitan verse, bi jon sims celebration





	trial & error

**Author's Note:**

> fourth installment for the [jon sims bi pride event](https://jonsimsbipride.tumblr.com/)! this is for the gender prompt, but it does intersect with hardship and solidarity, too.
> 
> **CWs in the end notes!**

───── ✿ ─────

Jon hasn’t thought about Delevan in years, it feels like. There isn’t very much to think back on, given that their tentative interest in one another barely survived past the first month of that summer. There are three things that Jon supposes he can thank him for, though. Reminding him that the world still had people in it when he was in danger of forgetting, giving him the context to fully understand that his disinterest in sex hadn’t been isolated to his relationship with Georgie, and proving to him that most normal people won’t kick up a fuss about that sort of thing when you tell them.

It was nice. He was a necessary step, Jon thinks. And they did stay friends, through text. It was Jon’s own fault that communication eventually petered out, too, not any cold shoulder to do with rejection or spite. That summer had left irreparable marks on him that he still hasn’t healed from.

Georgie, he’s thought about. All of her blouses in his closet, the imprint she’d left on him. The photograph in his hand, a white crease worn down between where his temple touches her cheek, dividing them despite her arm around his shoulders, holding him close. She’s wearing the forest green button-up that he’d given her, had worn around waiting for her to notice. There’s a clip in his hair that Alma gave him holding back his fringe; the start of the longest he’d ever let it grow.

A hand drifts up into his hair now, petrified suddenly of his fingertips coming away oily. They don’t, and he feels a moment of genuine relief. He still needs to get this done so that he can shower, though. He needs to get through to the third step before the night ends. He should… hurry up and finish this.

…After digging around for that hairclip. He knows it’s got to be in here somewhere, it— yes, there it is. Small and golden with a few decorative, fake pearls pressed into it. He could never wear anything like this now.

There are actually quite a few of these in here that he’d forgotten about. Little plastic, sparkly butterfly clips and the cream-colored satin ribbon he’d tied his ponytail with in _Hamlet._ Pretty, useless things.

He gathers them into his palm to pour onto the mattress in a small pile beside the photograph and the aviators and the little round man, drawing the box onto his lap to sift through for another one he could swear he’d left in here, too.

───── ✿ ─────

There was nothing on the television. There hadn’t been for days, it felt like, but Jon still flipped through the channels anyway any time he ended up on the couch instead of his bed. Baking show. _Reality dating_ show, _ugh._ True crime. No, no, no.

He only had a limited amount of books on hand, though, and even less will to read them. There was no one he could call on the phone that wouldn’t have driven him up the wall, nowhere he could go that wouldn’t hurt. He couldn’t throw anything in frustration, either, because that flat wasn’t technically his _home_ and Colin provided an ever-present consequence to his every unsavory action.

Colin was also the one to answer the door every time someone knocked on it. No one ever knocked on their door until Jon couldn’t stand without crutches to begin with, so he couldn’t even tell them to go away himself. They would knock, and _Colin_ would answer, and Jon wouldn’t be able to dismiss anyone without them seeing the state he was still in first. Lose-lose-lose situation. Worse than nothing being on television while he had little else to do but sulk.

“Oi.”

Jon’s arm dropped off the edge of the couch, remote scraping the ground. “What?”

“Company.” Colin stepped back into the room and returned to the kitchen to finish packing up his lunch. Behind him, Mickey poked her head around the corner with a cautious smile.

_Again._ Wasn’t she tired of this?

“Hey,” was all she started with, pulling her bag around her shoulder to hug it with both arms. She glanced at the television, the remote in his hand. “Anything good?”

Jon let the remote fall gently to the floor so he could sit himself up. “No,” he answered through his teeth, a hand on his knee to stabilize it through the shift. “But that’s any Sunday.”

She tried to give him a laugh. Operative word being _‘tried.’_

_(He hated that the most, he thought. Of all the things he_ hated _back then, knowing he’d done so much damage to someone’s ability to laugh was very near the top of the list.)_

“Do you need something?”

Mickey opened her mouth and shut it again, turning around to watch as Colin crossed behind her to pull his coat off the rack and step out without a word. Jon didn’t know where he was going, and didn’t care. He wanted _both_ of them to leave, so he could find something soft enough to throw across the room without getting into trouble, or leaving a dent.

“You weren’t at the last show,” Mickey said, shifting from foot to foot. She tucked her short waves behind her ear, and if Jon didn’t know that she was anything but bashful, he might not have thought anything of it. “I was really hoping to see you there.”

“I’ve been a bit occupied, if it’s escaped your notice.”

G-d, he didn’t _mean_ to snap. Or — he _did,_ but every time he heard himself, he wanted to be _able_ to regret it. He didn’t regret it enough to stop, at the time, and he would have _thought_ that it would be enough to stop her from coming by.

Mickey didn’t recoil, but her shoulders did drop. She stared at him for a longer moment than he could recall her staring in a while, studying him. Searching for words.

“You haven’t exactly _let_ it escape my notice,” she finally said, planting her feet. “I only asked you to come because everyone wanted to see you. They were _worried_ about you, they _missed_ you, and—”

“And it’s over now,” he interrupted. “So I don’t see why you saw fit to come here and— and _rub that_ in my face.”

Her brow sank, head shaking slowly. “Is that why you think I’m here? To— To torment you, or something?”

_Why else?_ he almost asked. That, at least, he had the sense to keep to himself. For lack of a better response, he crossed his arms and tipped towards the back of the couch.

Mickey went quiet for a moment. Somehow, she didn’t sound angry when she finally spoke up again, even with the mild bite to her phrasing.

“Can I come over there, then, or are you that hellbent on scaring me off? Because I can tell you right now, it’s not going to work.”

His mumbled ‘whatever’ must have been enough. Jon gathered his legs as neatly as he could stand to with the pang it sent up into his left thigh, making enough room for her to sit by his hip. She didn’t look at him tenderly, or get into his space. Only set her bag on her lap and unzipped it, head down and curls obscuring her face. Unlike her.

“I just came by to give you some things. Would have given them to you on _Friday,_ but.” She paused, not quite mercifully. “You were occupied.”

He deserved that. He deserved that quite a lot, and so didn’t argue.

But he couldn’t help being a little curious about the things she had to deliver. Guilt coursed through him like contrast dye before an MRI, pooling coldly in his chest. He’d been _so_ rude to her every time she came to visit, and _still…_

Still, she pulled a wadded fabric from her bag and unrolled it in display; a black t-shirt, emblazoned with the _Chess_ logo on the front. Jon had never thought to liken the feeling of his heart doing unspeakable things in his chest to hydroplaning before, but that was the first sensation that came to mind.

“I just had Suzanne give me yours when she passed them all out.” Mickey handed it off to him almost lamely. “They run a little small, I found.”

Jon failed to toss out a seamless quip about how that only meant it might fit him perfectly, then, given his body type. He was too busy turning the shirt over to read the back, tracing his fingertips down the roster of the whole cast and crew until he found his own name in the alphabetical order.

He’d forgotten he had to give his size for these. It just fell completely out of focus, he forgot that he was looking _forward_ to this. That his name would even still be there, despite knowing logically that it was made and printed before he hurt himself and had to be taken out. It wouldn’t have been able to account for his absence. By virtue of poor timing, he both ceased to and continued to exist.

His throat was too dry to speak until he cleared it. “Thank you.”

“Yeah,” she said softly, dully. “You’re welcome.”

Jon started back over at the top of the list to read down each column once, twice, three times. In the time it took to do that, Mickey had fished something else out of her bag, holding it patiently in a curled fist until he looked up again. He sat up in surprise when she turned her hand over to hold up a double-comb hairpin, held together with elaborate, black-and-white beaded elastic.

“You— You _stole_ Florence’s hairpin?” 

For _him?_

“Not me.” When Jon didn’t immediately take it from her, Mickey paused to idly stretch it in her hands. “Katrina squirreled it away after the ballgown scene. It was a joint effort. She wanted to make it up to you, I think, you know?”

_Make_ what _up, stealing my role?_ He couldn’t say that. An understudy was never _stealing_ unless _they_ were the one to push someone off the stage and dislocate their knee so badly that it required surgical intervention. As far as Jon remembered, Katrina was just another blurry face in the background watching him cry in Mickey’s arms on the floor, disgusted and appalled by the scene. Surely, she couldn’t have _delighted_ in a situation so uncomfortable.

What could he say instead? Was this sweet of her, or just cruel? _Could_ he blame the messenger? Katrina wasn’t there for him to reject. Only Mickey.

Mickey, who looked sadder than he’d ever seen her before, even when she sat up to face him with a tentative smile. “Can I put your hair up for you?”

Jon’s posture stiffened. “No, um— No, I-I’d rather you didn’t.”

He hadn’t washed his hair yet. His attempt at a schedule placed that task at the end of every other day instead of the mornings because showering had become so physically draining that it made more sense to use it to exhaust himself before trying to sleep. And, in grossly uncharacteristic fashion, he’d skipped his last intended shower altogether, too cemented to his bed and the comfort of a weighted blanket.

_(He might sooner die than skip another shower now. It all sounds like the same thing, when he itches regardless.)_

The thought of Mickey putting her hands in his hair while it suddenly felt like a stale reminder of his depression made him feel nauseous, and ashamed, and then just angry at himself. He couldn’t look at her face, so he watched her hands as she wrung them on top of her bag. She stayed quiet while he compulsively tugged on a strand behind his ear, speaking up after a long moment of thought.

“I feel like I just won’t see you after this.” Serious, too serious. But startlingly calm; familiar, almost, in a way that made Jon feel a new sort of guilty. “I feel like you don’t want to see me ever again, and that— bird, you know that hurts me, don’t you?”

Jon cringed at the nickname; it was unbearably saccharine if not just unbearable _period,_ but it— she made it _sound—_ She made it something he could bear. It was something he could have been okay with, so long as it was coming from her. He thought it might be a butch thing, honestly. They could get away with any sappy pet names they wanted, and anybody would melt. Anybody would feel safe.

Unfair. On _both_ sides. Clearly, being cagey and dismissive wasn’t getting the message across, either. He had no choice but to be blunt, and get it over with. Get some answers for himself while he was at it.

“After the way I’ve been treating you, why would you want to?”

Mickey’s hands smoothed over her bag, scratching blunt nails along the canvas. “Because you’re still hurting, and I think you’ll regret pushing everyone away.”

“Being in a show together doesn’t forge unanimous unbreakable bonds.”

“Well, _no,_ but— it can form a couple of good ones? I mean, I thought— I thought, you and _I_ had…”

Jon’s eyes flickered up to Mickey’s face to find it pinkish and pinched with… disappointment? Pain? Embarrassment?

“…You know, I thought at least _we_ were close enough we’d try to stay friends after _Chess_ was done.” Her shoulders dropped a fraction more. “I thought we’d have time to maybe have a _conversation_ at some point, too, but… you know, now it seems you’re just keen to get rid of me, which makes me think I should just bite the bullet and say my piece now.”

_(And he’d suspected, of course. Hoped for it to be true, hoped he hadn’t just handcrafted it all in his head. Dragging daydreams out of their duets, desperate and delusional and lonely. He just feared it, too. It scared him just as much to want.)_

Something went cold in his chest. That contrast dye creeping, the skidding on a wet road with only collision as a way out of the cycle. Jon couldn’t have shrank much further back into the couch than he already had.

She noticed. Of course she noticed. Mickey tended to _see_ him, he’d found. The way he’d found that he _liked_ being seen, sometimes. A way that spelled out a pattern that he wanted to be comforted by, but— but broke it at the same time.

“You already know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”

“I—” Words caught in his dry mouth. “I… had a sneaking suspicion, but I didn’t want to— I didn’t want to assume, in case it was… disrespectful.”

“I think you just don’t like to risk being wrong.” Teasing, almost comfortable. She slid the bag off her lap and onto the floor. “Why would it have been disrespectful?”

Jon searched her face for the correct answer, dismayed at his inability to find it. “You— I mean, I didn’t think you liked men.”

She leaned her elbows on her knees. “I… didn’t think you _were_ a man. We’ve spoken at _length_ about you _not_ being a man. That was a majority of our conversations since the minute we met. You said yourself, you—?”

“I know what I said, I just—” Did he know what he said, though? It all felt so far away, with this sort of spotlight on him. “I thought you liked _women,_ i-is what I meant. You said _yourself.”_

Mickey froze. “I— Hang on. I think there might be a few misconceptions at play here. Can we… talk about them?”

“Do we _have_ to?” he asked quickly. “Is it really necessary, Michelle?”

Her face hardened for an agonizing, silent moment. “That’s not the way you want to end this, Jon. You don’t get to get nasty with me for trying to help you.”

“I don’t get to—” A laugh spat like a drop of oil. _“You_ barged into my flat.”

“Your mate answered the door.”

“I didn’t _ask you_ to come here—”

_“G-d!”_ Not a shout, but breathy disbelief. Mickey shook her head at him, almost awestruck in her sadness. “You’re really terrified, aren’t you?”

It felt like falling again, from the second to last step off the stage. Jon halted, faltered, and stared. Mickey’s shoulders dropped again, but not in surrender.

“I’m not trying to scare you _more,_ or tell you that you shouldn’t be afraid. I can’t imagine how you carry it all.”

_I’m not carrying anything,_ Jon could have lied, but she’d caught him too many times already. Was it three? He didn’t know anymore. It was all so heavy, and she was right about everything. He hated being wrong.

Mickey didn’t put her hand on his leg the way she might have before he destroyed it, but he could sense that she wanted to.

“I’d love to see you carry just a little bit less.”

He shook his head finally. “I don’t— I don’t think I could ask that of you.”

“You’re not asking,” she shrugged. “I’m asking. Because I don’t think all _this_ that you’ve been doing, all the sass and snapping and shoving me out the door? I really don’t think that’s you.”

Jon scoffed. “You don’t actually know me very well.”

“We spent, like, _eight hours a day_ together for _weeks._ I think I’ve got a basic foundation at the _least.”_ She let affection into her face again. “And I’ve kissed you enough times that I finally lost count. I _liked_ kissing you.”

She finally reached for his hand, and he let her. Jon couldn’t tear his eyes off of his own knees bent up against the couch behind her ribs, fighting fidgets and shaking. Mickey gripped his hand firmly enough to still his twitching fingers.

“I liked kissing _you.”_

Jon shook his head, birdlike and quick. “You’ve never kissed _me._ I was playing a character.”

“I’m not talking about Florence. I’m talking about the person I met before auditions who _lit up_ when I said I’d rather play the Russian than his girl because he felt the same way but different. Jon, can you imagine if we hadn’t _done_ something about that? Can you imagine me in that ballgown? Because I can’t, and I don’t want to. And I don’t want to imagine you in that suit.”

Neither did Jon. The minute she said it, his face soured at the mental image. He’d worn enough suits in his lifetime, for cello recitals and his bar mitzvah and his graduation and — no, he was quite done with men’s suits. But he didn’t know if he would ever be able to wear a ballgown again. He didn’t know where he would wear his pink saree, or the blue and bronze one that belonged to his bebe once.

What would bebe think of him? Could a mother who never got to know him understand that he might not be her son? How would all of the women he admired react to his envy and longing?

Those he trusted most with it never called themselves _women._ Mickey’s persistence just made him wonder: was butch love something he would always want, or did he just miss Georgie? How could he ever be deserving of love like that?

Big questions. Too big. Mickey was waiting for him to respond to another one. Jon tucked his hair behind his ear once, twice, three times to be sure it would stay back.

“No, I don’t want to imagine it, either,” he admitted. “But it’s not like I’m wearing a dress right now. I-I haven’t been _shaving,_ I’m—”

“You think any of that matters to me?” Mickey sounded amused for a second, almost, in disbelief. “You haven’t stopped being the same person, have you?”

“I have no idea who you think I am. I don’t know— _I_ don’t know who I am. I moved here to try and figure it out, but all this with you…” Jon dropped his face into his hand. “It’s only given me more to untangle.”

Mickey let out a slow breath, humming to herself. She gave him a moment to rock himself against the couch before she continued speaking; she knew he wouldn’t want her to comment on it, or stop, or make a spectacle of him. She knew that much.

“Does the idea of me having feelings for you make you feel misidentified? If you go off of the idea that I tend to just call myself gay and leave it there.”

Jon rubbed his wrist against his mouth, pressing his lips into his teeth for the brief pain of it. “I… Sometimes? I think? But—”

But not always. Sometimes it went like this:

He would think about it, and sunflowers would rise up from some bed of soil under his lungs before anything else. A raincloud would open up to nurture them, but the rain would fall too hard, and they’d drown. He would forget that he’d been trying to plant flowers, and wonder why his garden was so ugly.

And then sometimes, it went like this:

He would think about it, and it would already be raining. The storm would ravage that hidden garden unrecognizable first. He would have to wait for the flood to sink away into the dirt, for the memory of sunlight before he could walk on it again, and then he could see the tiny sprouts struggling through the mud.

Jon shrugged his shoulders high. “It’s affirming at the same time. Which makes me worry that I’m— I don’t know, that I was just _method acting?”_

The snort she let out was almost hurtful, but she looked apologetic enough that it was only a mild sting. “You thought that even though we switched roles before we even _got_ them?”

“I— Yes? Maybe?” He dropped his forehead against the heel of his palm in frustration. “I don’t know.”

Mickey let out a slow sigh. He counted all the way to six before she spoke again.

“Okay, um… Gender is like— You’re _performing_ it, yes, but it’s not a _performance._ You’ve never given off the impression that you see it like a costume.”

“But I don’t think I’m a _woman.”_ He cringed as he said it, like it was just as wrong as saying he wasn’t a man. “Wouldn’t that… disqualify me from your field of interest?”

She giggled at his phrasing, but shook her head. “Do _you_ honestly think this black and white, or do you just assume everyone else does and try to say it first?”

Jon couldn’t come up with an answer to that. Mickey gave him a sympathetic look, but not _pity._ He could tell, for once, that it wasn’t pity.

“Well, I’m going to take that as you not wanting to do either of those things. Which is good, if you’re in that wiggly area I think we’ve both been floating around in together.” She sighed like she was cleansing something out of her lungs. “I think sexuality comes with a lot of preconceived rigidity that’s just not there.”

To _that,_ he scoffs in agreement. “I’ve gotten plenty of that for being bi, yes.”

“Lesbians get it, too,” she said. “I distinctly remember ranting at you about all the transphobia before, actually. When we were hanging out with Amir and his girlfriend, because they started telling us how—”

“Right, yes,” Jon snapped his fingers. “How people get on her case and ask if she’s _sure_ she’s straight because she’s with a trans man. I remember now, yes.”

“Yeah, exactly.” She shook her head. “Bollocks. If anybody got on me for having a transfeminine partner, they’d be sorry.”

The laugh in her voice faded with his smile. Jon watched the overlap of their hands, comparing the shapes and colors. The visibility of the tendons in the back of his hand, the lack thereof in hers. His long, narrow fingers against her soft, rounded palm. Neither of their nails painted, but for different reasons. Mickey rolled her thumb over his knuckles.

“That’s… That’s how I’d been thinking of you, based on the way you always talked about it. Was that wrong of me?”

Jon opens his mouth, and shuts it. “No, it wasn’t. I mean, it’s— It’s hard for me to say out loud, a-a lot of the time, but… technically, that’s the only conclusion there is.”

Mickey makes a short sound. “No, it’s not the _only_ one.”

“Well, okay, rather— I understand how you came to that conclusion. I think I… _wanted_ you to read me that way. I wanted to see if I _could_ be read that way without…” Jon paused to bite his lip and squeeze her hand. “I’m not offended because you might not be wrong, but I don’t _know_ yet. I don’t— I don’t think I’m in a place to figure it out right now, I’m—”

Misery swelled his throat shut for heartbeats at a time, lingering and alive with refusal. He’d smothered it with work and focus and friends for as much of the summer as he could, but falling had destroyed that progress. It set him back. This conversation just kept him on that precipice he’d been on since he moved here where any small thing could drive him to tears.

“That’s alright,” she told him. She pulled his hand off of his own lap to hold it in hers. “I didn’t bring this up because I expected a particular answer, you know? I just wanted you to know where I was at. Would have driven me crazy if I never got it off my chest before we fell out.” A distance in her short laugh. “Closure, I suppose.”

“I don’t want you out of my life,” he blurted out. “In fact, I think I might really need you in it. I’m— I’m sorry, for the way I’ve been treating you.”

“I know you are, bird.” He didn’t know how she could stand to look so gently at him, even after he’d apologized. “Water under the bridge, if you want it to be.”

Jon nodded fervently, and then again when she opened her arms in request for a hug. He ducked forward to let her wrap him up, breathing his way through the shake in his lungs until it was gone. Sitting back again, he managed to return her smile. Mickey reached for his hand again and turned her head to glance about the room with a deep breath, her other hand falling down onto her lap.

“Well! I also wanted to tell you that I’ve got my consultation to see about testosterone on Tuesday.”

Jon’s mouth dropped open. “So soon?”

Mickey wiggled where she was perched for a moment in excitement. “Yeah! The show’s over now, so I can just break for the season while my voice is doing whatever nonsense it’ll do.” She laughed, head ducked down again. “Dive back in when I sound more like myself. Finally.”

Jon felt his brow unwind just that fraction more, softening at her. “That’s amazing, Mickey. I’m so happy for you.”

Mickey tossed him another bright grin, curls falling around her cheeks. “You know, you’re a big part of what pushed me to finally go for it. Amir hooked me up with an appointment to see his guy, yeah, but it was mostly you that made me feel ready.”

Hydroplaning again. So much rain. “Really?”

“Yeah, I mean… I told you, it was always something I sort of put on the shelf, like… _‘oh, I’ll do it eventually.’_ But I never had a plan. All our talk, our work together, how you encouraged me… I don’t know. Singing with you and seeing how you’d look at me, even from the audience, it made me feel like I’d never be able to feel _that safe_ singing with this voice again. Feel that— that _seen,_ even before I’d made any of the changes I’ve always wanted. It made me realize how badly I need that change, but that people like you don’t need it from me to understand who I am.”

Jon didn’t realize he was about to kiss her until he’d leaned too far forward to mask it as a mistake. He felt her hand slide over his cheek the way it did when the music would decrescendo around them and the lights would go down, and allowed himself the comfort in her reciprocation before he pulled away. Then it hit him like a bus.

“I— I’m sorry, I didn't think—”

“No, no, it’s alright.” Without the pressure of a scripted response in the way, Mickey let herself look a little breathless. “It's alright.”

Jon hadn’t even taken the time to hope that getting to do this offstage, as only themselves, would give him a clearer answer. All he’d wanted in the split second before leaning forward was to tell her that her words meant something to him, would sit in his chest like sunflower seeds maybe forever for all he knew, in the most meaningful way he knew how to communicate something that big. He hadn’t thought ahead to the moment after, when the rain would start.

It felt more like drizzle than downpour. Like the mist that still touches your face even with an umbrella over your head. Standing under an awning in the springtime and spotting the wisping arch of a rainbow far across the sky.

He’d thought before that it would have been better for them to leave their last kiss on the stage, between Florence and Anatoly in their Terrace Duet. But why had he become so certain that there needed to be some dramatic curtain call to their friendship in the first place? Mickey had been the first one to run to him when he fell. She had taken up the torch of delivering things to him on behalf of everyone else, visiting, checking in. She kept climbing out of the _past_ that he was trying to create, and — he wanted to let her. He just didn’t know what was meant to come after that.

“…That, um—” He swallowed past a nervous laugh. “That didn’t make anything make more sense.”

“Well, of course not.” Mickey chuckled, readjusted her grip on his hand. “It’s going to take more than one kiss to figure it out. If you want my help, you can have it. If you need to figure it out by yourself, just say so and I’ll step back.” 

“And… say that I never turn out ready to— to start a relationship, what then?”

Warmly, she shook her head. “I don’t want to help you with the end goal of ending up together. I want to help you because you’re my friend.”

Jon watched her face for a moment, and then looked back down at their hands. It took him some time to break his silence with a sniff and nod in agreement.

His eyes skipped over their laps to the t-shirt and beaded combs still resting on his legs. He picked up the hairpin by the teeth and held it out to her, undoing his hand from hers to card his fingers back through his hair. The joy in her eyes made him feel like bravery might be worth it.

───── ✿ ─────

**Author's Note:**

> **CW: internalized transphobia; depression**
> 
> oh mickey you're so fine you're so fine you blow my mind hey mick[bursts into tears]
> 
> (if you're not familiar with her or his accident, it's fully explored in [chapter 9 of tsp](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22189123/chapters/56918776)! jon's time with that theater group was extremely formative for him.)
> 
> [[jon sims bi pride tumblr](http://jonsimsbipride.tumblr.com/)] | [[my tumblr](http://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/)] | [[ GTCU masterpost](https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/14KlgPfOb16ocGj8k0QrElw6UY0SqoNeH2yTj_zQ31bA/edit#)]


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